Israel-Hamas Conflict: how difficult the hostage negotiations are?

CGTN Europe

Melanie Garson, Associate Professor in International Security and Conflict Resolution from University College London talked with CGTN Europe about the difficulties of the hostage negotiation in Israel-Palestine conflict.

Transcript

00:00 Well, let's talk now to Melanie Garson, who's an associate professor in international security

00:04 and conflict resolution at University College London. Good to see you, Melanie. Thank you

00:08 for joining us. So negotiations continuing. How difficult are they? What sort of assurances

00:13 are both sides looking for?

00:15 Thank you very much. And good afternoon. I think right now we're operating in an extremely

00:24 fragile state in the sense that negotiating on a day by day basis is beginning to degrade.

00:32 It's beginning to see the change of parameters with particularly the names coming out from

00:39 the commerce side of being very piecemeal. It's a fight for every name and working along

00:46 those parameters where it's practically being renegotiated constantly is a significant danger.

00:54 And it's unlikely to be able to be continued like this for a number of days.

01:00 So we've been seeing these sort of day by day extensions so far, haven't we? The international

01:04 community wants a longer lasting peace agreement. How challenging is this?

01:12 It's going to be extraordinarily challenging, and particularly with what we're seeing with

01:17 the expansion now of the violence into Maynizov with that expanded violence, because what's

01:25 being seen is in return for the hostages that have Palestinian former prisoners or prisoners

01:31 being released, those releases are creating a sense of emboldenment. We're seeing the

01:37 expansion of that conflict. So it's not reassuring or creating internally the reassurances of

01:45 stability that can go forward. That's going to add an additional hurdle for the negotiation

01:51 for looking at any long term solution. And without further evidence from commerce at

01:58 this point of proof of life of many of the people they're negotiating, the continued

02:04 negotiation is going to be difficult. And the general feeling that I've been getting

02:11 is that it's unlikely to continue the ceasefire past Friday as we're looking at it.

02:17 So what about the role of other countries in this negotiations, countries like Egypt

02:22 and particularly Qatar? Do they now have enough leverage after all these weeks of negotiations

02:26 so far to perhaps try and make some meaningful progress?

02:31 Well, I mean, we've seen a huge amount of involvement from Qatar, a country that doesn't

02:38 traditionally have diplomatic relations of any sort with Israel, but happened to have

02:44 that deep involvement with Hamas, having funded Hamas, having Hamas leaders sit on their territory

02:51 to be able to form some kind of leverage of them. Also, Egypt has emerged, but their role

02:58 is less focused on, but their role has been extremely significant, particularly within

03:03 facilitating the hostage transfers and particularly with their view looking towards a day zero

03:09 scenario and sort of calling for demilitarization of Gaza. So those players are extremely important.

03:15 I think the question of what we're seeing, particularly with the hostage releases, is

03:19 what's becoming increasingly clear. And we've saw this rather command and control over who

03:26 is holding the various hostages has become very fragmented. They're being held across

03:31 different groups in different areas. We see that today with the release of just two people

03:36 instead of the whole group together. So they're clearly being held in different places. And

03:41 that's adding another level of complexity, but even the leverage that Qatar or Egypt

03:46 can place over any of these groups.

03:49 Melanie, good to talk to you today. Thank you very much for joining us. That's Melanie

03:53 Garson from University College London.

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